How Toronto’s stuttering launch of the Finch West LRT could fix its streetcars

Toronto was promised rapid transit when the Finch West LRT launched in December.

But what it got was a train that lost a race with a runner, travelled slower than buses and sat at traffic lights while drivers breezed by.

Provincial transit agency Metrolinx said the system it had built for Toronto could go faster than it was. It said its trains should be able to canter through lights.

It was the City of Toronto’s existing policies, Metrolinx and the provincial government said, that were dragging the system down.

The frustration was palpable.

“New billion-dollar light rail lines shouldn’t wait at red lights,” advocacy group TTCriders complained after the line launched.

Fury from passengers and political pressure from the province forced a reaction at city hall.

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow said she would move swiftly to make changes.

At a December council meeting, she introduced a motion to bring “more aggressive” signal priority to the Finch West LRT and upcoming Eglinton Crosstown LRT. Chow also asked staff to look at the whole above ground rail network.

The latter order is being treated as a potential turning point by transit advocates and experts, a political move that opens the door to improving a part of Toronto’s transportation system that has struggled for years.

The problem the move could fix revolves around streetcars. The iconic red light rail vehicles are Toronto’s least reliable transit and its most unpopular.

A February update from the new CEO of the TTC shows streetcars have an on-time performance of just 55 per cent, compared to 73 per cent for buses and 82 per cent for subways.

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Customer satisfaction is lower too, with only 58 per cent of streetcar riders satisfied. That’s substantially lower than the 70 per cent of bus passengers and 74 per cent of subway riders.

Part of the issue is that the roads streetcars run on have been plagued by construction delays and rerouting for years, while most operate within traffic.

The setup has meant that subways have breezed from one stop to another with more limited interruptions, while streetcars have waited at red lights. They have travelled slowly in the middle of the road, pulled to a stop at platforms and then paused again for traffic signals.

It’s led to delays, bunching and frustrated riders.

Narayan Donaldson, integrated mobility consultant with Mobycon, told the TTC board on Tuesday that tweaking how the traffic lights work in Toronto could address that problem.

He said varying the length of green lights and breaking pedestrian crossings into smaller portions could allow delayed streetcars to make up the minutes they’re currently losing.

Specifically, red lights could be shortened, and green lights could be extended when streetcars approach to stop them from having to idle at intersections.

“(For) late streetcars, it’s incredibly important for them to have as low a delay as possible,” he explained. “We need to do everything in our power to get those caught up to reduce the gaps in service.”

Donaldson said Toronto largely already has the technology it needs to make the changes, but has been “constrained by policy.”

Jonathan English, the founding principal of Infrastory Insights, told the board that overhauling streetcar speeds and signal rules would be one of the cheapest and most effective ways to revolutionize transit in the city.

“This is not an outrageously expensive plan, this is not something that requires digging deep tunnels or spending billions of dollars,” he said.

“A lot of these things are technologies that are extremely proven, have been implemented elsewhere and in some cases even here in Toronto. It’s just a matter of rolling them out everywhere as quickly as possible.”

English suggested eliminating left-hand turns at Spadina’s intersections with College, Dundas and Queen could boost performance. He also said raising the speed of streetcars on roads like the Queensway would help.

Moving people from cars and onto transit would ultimately improve road safety as well as commuter speed, he said.

“Making transit more competitive is a safety measure,” English said.

TTC staff said Tuesday they were currently undertaking a review of the entire streetcar network to look for the opportunities the experts had outlined.

As part of the review, the TTC is looking to review the streetcar network one corridor at a time.